with her there, dangling your own hands in the water

where blue and silver fish dart away over stone,

stoon, stein, like the meanings of things, vanish?

She feels she is somewhere else, intensely, simply because

of words; sings loudly in nonsense, smiling, smiling.

If you were really there what would you write on a postcard,

or on the sand, near where the river runs into the sea?

The Way My Mother Speaks

I say her phrases to myself

in my head

or under the shallows of my breath,

restful shapes moving.

The day and ever. The day and ever.

The train this slow evening

goes down England

browsing for the right sky,

too blue swapped for a cool grey.

For miles I have been saying

What like is it

the way I say things when I think.

Nothing is silent. Nothing is not silent.

What like is it.

Only tonight

I am happy and sad

like a child

who stood at the end of summer

and dipped a net

in a green, erotic pond. The day

and ever. The day and ever.

I am homesick, free, in love

with the way my mother speaks.

In Your Mind

The other country, is it anticipated or half-remembered?

Its language is muffled by the rain which falls all afternoon

one autumn in England, and in your mind

you put aside your work and head for the airport

with a credit card and a warm coat you will leave

on the plane. The past fades like newsprint in the sun.

You know people there. Their faces are photographs

on the wrong side of your eyes. A beautiful boy

in the bar on the harbour serves you a drink – what? –

asks you if men could possibly land on the moon.

A moon like an orange drawn by a child. No.

Never. You watch it peel itself into the sea.

Sleep. The rasp of carpentry wakes you. On the wall,

a painting lost for thirty years renders the room yours.

Of course. You go to your job, right at the old hotel, left,

then left again. You love this job. Apt sounds

mark the passing of the hours. Seagulls. Bells. A flute

practising scales. You swap a coin for a fish on the way home.

Then suddenly you are lost but not lost, dawdling

on the blue bridge, watching six swans vanish

under your feet. The certainty of place turns on the lights

all over town, turns up the scent on the air. For a moment

you are there, in the other country, knowing its name.

And then a desk. A newspaper. A window. English rain.

Permissions Acknowledgements